Dargonhall was never silent. Her streets–from those caked with grime to those pristine and washed–were so alive that even if all were to vanish, one would still swear that the laughter of those sweet-on, the sighs of those whose hearts ached, and the cries of the forlorn street children would still leak out through the desolate alleys, the cracks in walls, and even the space between the baker’s oven and the floor.

The city was a gem of a creation. Its palace gleamed against the white mountains behind it, and towered over the majestic houses of the nobles and rich. Its high white walls blocked off all those of lesser disposition from sight, and with this, the thoughts of those aforementioned.

On the grime-covered side of the white washed wall, things were a spectacular shamble. Murder, rape, and slavery were a common fact, hidden well from the city guard (those still keeping with their once noble cause) but still an ever-present threat to all.

But this isn’t where this story begins; it begins on the opposite side of that awe inducing wall. Just atop a modest (to the standards of the rich) merchant’s home, a young thief was perched, his eyes sharpened to the night as he watched blobs of light pass about below. They were completely oblivious to the seventeen year old watching them like a hawk to its prey, as he moved silently across the rooftops near the wall. He reached a place close enough to leap onto the top of the divider. A risky move, but the need was there as the sun was almost to rising. A shadow scaling down the side of a grimy wall was harder to identify than a black-clothed youth attempting to slip past the Gate Guard in full light, or to squeeze through one of the still undiscovered passages in the wall where someone had pried out a few columns of bricks.

The little thief must have experienced a lapse in intelligence to have allowed time to slip out of his grasp as he had. Had not he the hearing of a paranoid rabbit, he may have not heard the distant toll of the chapel clock. And where would he have been?

‘Hanged, that’s where!’

He was better off with the risk of having to run and the soreness in his fingers from clinging to the small indents between each brick as he shimmied down the surface—more muck than stone. How mud had gotten so high up, he would never know. But his bet was on the Littles aiming for the other side—Adults as well, probably trying to let out their frustration after long days of work. Especially the ones who worked all day on the ‘right’ side of the Divider, only to be kicked back into the grime once the sun began to set.

He slipped into his building and nodded to the doorman just as the first rays peeked out over the city.
“Mornin’ Taffer,” the large burly man grunted as the thief went up the stairs, taking them three at a time and locking himself into his dusty attic home.

How long this home would last, he had no idea. He had grown used to moving around in his life in the shadows.

The boy hadn’t always lived the life of a thief. He had once been an honest boy, with an honest family. Until he saw the world for what he now knew it to be. He saw mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, and any other blood tie you could think of cast each other off like rubbish.

They say blood is thicker than water. But greed had the viscosity of molasses. If you wanted someone loyal to you, they had to have a reason to be–a reason that meant something. They had to get something out of the connection, otherwise, you were useless to them and treated as such.

So a thief is what he had become. Paranoid and sometimes cynical in his thinking, he loved every second of it.

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